


Extreme Unction

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:56:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The voice is always first, disembodied...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extreme Unction

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure this was a prompt!fic because I don't typically write Dean/Castiel. Or any Castiel, for that matter. Originally published circa January 2010.

The voice is always first, disembodied, like incarnation is somehow reductive for him.

 

Then the eyes appear, though Dean’s sure the rest of him’s there, too. But it’s the eyes he sees before anything else. They see things he doesn’t bare to anyone, make him want to squirm in his skin.

 

He thinks he’s dreaming.

 

They’re standing before the altar of a great stone church, its vast narthex cast into dancing shadows by tiers of red candles lit by the desperate who pray to a God that Dean is now convinced exists, though the jury is still out on whether God cares.

 

Castiel is just there, in the space it takes Dean’s eyes to adjust to the dimness, to take in the heavy weight of wood hanging pendulous over the altar. He thinks its swaying is just his imagination. What kind of wind would make it move?

 

As if in answer to a question he doesn’t ask aloud, Castiel becomes, and Dean blinks back his surprise and bites back his usual remark about knocking or warning a guy or whatever.

 

Something in the hush of the wide stone space requires quiet.

 

“Do you know where you are, Dean?”

 

“Yeah. In bed at the Red Rock Motel.”

 

Castiel doesn’t bother with disapproval, doesn’t so much as move his head, but Dean senses that negation and has to hide the urge to hunch his shoulders against it.

 

“This is St. Lucy’s, Dean. Do you know the story of St. Lucy?”

 

Dean spares a second to peer into the grey recesses at the statues that lurk there, lifelike and yet somehow more fake for their expressions of pious surrender.

 

“I’m guessing she was a martyr.”

 

Castiel’s nod this time has something of the expected impatience in it.

 

“She was the virgin martyr, Dean. She refused to marry a young nobleman who wanted her dowry, and when the young man learned of her decision to give her goods to the poor, he accused her of Christianity in a time when such faith was a crime.”

 

“Well, I’m no virgin--“ He starts to say, but Castiel holds up an imperious hand.

 

“To punish her for her holiness, they tried to make a whore of her, to turn her out at a brothel for the pleasure of the nobleman and his kin. But God made it so that she could not be removed from her home for such a cause, and she was spared the sacrifice of her virtue. Instead, she was tortured and eventually succumbed to the price of fire and agony exacted from her unsullied flesh.”

 

“God’s reward was for her to be tortured to death?” It’s not really a question. “Why am I not surprised.” Neither is that.

 

“As usual, Dean, you miss my point.”

 

“So why don’t you spare me the bedtime stories and just tell me what it is you want.”

 

“Are you so anxious to return to your dreams, Dean?”

 

For a second that he’s sure is imaginary, he feels the searing agony of his skin being peeled away, hears the consonant cries of others like him who share the rack.

 

“Stop it,” he whispers, and he can’t look the angel in the eyes.

 

“I’ve done nothing to you yet, Dean. Your guilt is what makes you weak.”

 

“I can’t be—“

 

What? Weak? Of course he can. Is. What’s left of him is hardly enough to fill the hole he ripped himself from.

 

“Do you want to be strong again, Dean? Would you like the dreams to cease? I can give you peace…of a kind.”

 

Dean’s learned enough to know that angels aren’t much different from the garden variety creature at the crossroads. There’s always something to be given away.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“Obeisance. Fealty. I won’t ask love.”

 

Like a votive flame the idea starts to take shape in Dean’s head.

  
“Are you saying you want—“

 

“Isn’t it what you also want, Dean? Freedom from thought. An absence of anguish. Some blank white space for yourself, away from what you’ve become.”

 

“You’re talking about grace.”

 

“No.” The gravity in the angel’s face makes Dean’s heart stutter and race. “More like…a salve.”

 

Dean knows enough Latin to imagine what Castiel means.

 

“Here?” Forget that he’s never considered this before. Forget that he can’t believe he’s considering it now. The only thing Dean can consider is the cold, hard stone beneath his knees.

 

And like that, he’s there, looking up, mouth open, at Castiel, who has in his eyes the furious focus of the plaster cast watching this frozen tableau.

 

“I don’t—“ There’s nothing left of breath to voice his fear, only the coldness of the marble beneath his knees driving up through his belly and wrapping around his heart, climbing his throat.

 

He thinks if he exhales, he’ll see a stream of smoke leaving him, like his soul is escaping.

 

Castiel rests his hand on Dean’s head, and that simple gesture drives away the ice, until though his heart is pounding in his ears, he can once again breathe freely.

 

The angel caresses Dean, moving his warm, dry hand over his forehead first and then down his cheek, pausing to run the pad of his thumb over Dean’s still-parted lips.

 

“Let me in.”

 

Dean’s sure the angel says it with only ordinary authority, but it echoes from the coping, from the arched vaults overhead, from every niche with hidden eyes turned upward, imploring.

 

Dean looks up to see Castiel’s gaze on his face, not on his own eyes, wide with trying to keep back unexpected, inexplicable tears, but upon the place where his thumb just brushes the glistening space between Dean’s teeth.

 

Almost on reflex, Dean wets his lips, tastes instead the salt of the angel’s skin, and suddenly Castiel’s other hand is also there, holding him still and steady, cupping his face and drawing down his lower jaw with the gentle pressure of absolute intent.

 

Dean opens his mouth wide, no longer sure what they’re doing here, no longer sure he cares, either, except that he’s hard in his jeans, aching with a need that he can’t name, can’t ever have known before this moment.

 

When the angel removed the barriers between his body and Dean’s mouth hardly matters as, still looking only into Castiel’s eyes, Dean feels the heaviness of hot, smooth flesh on his lips, lets go of whatever fleeting doubt he might have had about any of this, and brushes his tongue across the weeping slit.

Not having anything to compare it to, Dean is unsure what to expect, but he’s fairly certain that it shouldn’t be so sweet, the slide of refreshing water down a parched throat, the promise of summer in the first bite of new fruit.

 

He makes a noise, maybe a whimper, and is rewarded with the weight of all that heavy flesh into his mouth.

 

Everywhere, he feels it, as though it’s thrusting into secret places, as though it’s reaching all the wounds he can never name, not even to himself.

 

He closes his lips around Castiel’s shaft and hums his surrender of self, letting his eyes slide shut with the volitionless oblivion of giving everything away, a peace that fills him even as he feels the crown bump the back of his throat and breathes until he can swallow it down.

 

The attenuated seconds of ecstasy that follow are not meant for mortals, and Dean has to close his eyes against the brightness of his vision, Castiel above him, head thrown back, eyes blazing with light, one hand scribing a blessing on Dean’s forehead, the other spread wide and reaching for the cross that hangs above them.

 

He swallows and swallows and swallows until Castiel pulses with a wordless shout like a thousand thousand holy throats crying hallelujah in chorus.

 

Fire fills his veins, and he gasps around the still solid flesh in his mouth, gasps as Castiel’s gift courses through him, scrying out every evil atom of his (un)original sin and shriving him until he’s suspended, breathless, at the very edge of being.

 

Everything is lost in a pervasive light that breaks over him, an agonizing epiphany.

 

He awakes, alone and shivering, his blankets kicked back and belly wet, jaw sore and knees complaining as he levers his legs over the edge of the bed and sits up.

 

Castiel appears at the edge of his vision, saying nothing, only resting the lightest suggestion of his look on Dean.

 

Dean drops his eyes, then his chin, the only posture of prayer he’s ever felt comfortable conceding.

 

“We have work to do,” the angel says.

 

And Dean, strong enough, answers, “Amen.”

 


End file.
